While it's had some duds, most of the titles from Platinum Games have earned critical acclaim. In fact, some of Platinum's work, like Bayonetta 2 and Nier: Automata, have even won Game of the Year awards. Its newest game, the Switch-exclusive Astral Chain, is also earning high review scores from critics, but it's being review bombed by users on Metacritic for a ridiculous reason.
It seems as though Astral Chain is being review bombed simply because it's a Nintendo Switch exclusive. The game's Metacritic page was flooded with 0/10 scores shortly after its launch on August 30, which made its user rating plummet. However, fans have since rallied behind the game, countering the negative reviews with 10/10 scores, so there are now 667 positive scores and 299 negative scores. The result is that the Astral Chain user score is now sitting at 7.0 on Metacritic, indicating "mixed or average reviews." By comparison, its critic score is 87 based on 58 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."
Of course, it's worth pointing out that the vast majority of Astral Chain user reviews on Metacritic, whether they are positive or negative, are hardly actual critiques of the game. Since the game literally just launched on August 30, it's highly unlikely that many of the people scoring it high and low have actually played through the game. In fact, Astral Chain takes at least 12 hours to beat, with some publications estimating much higher playtimes. So even if they have played the game, it's virtually impossible that many of them actually finished it before assigning their scores.
Review bombing is nothing new, and it's a practice that doesn't seem like it will be going away. Gamers often use it as a way to protest something a company is doing, though review bombing a game simply for being exclusive seems a bit harsh. After all, Nintendo funded Astral Chain and paid to publish it, so it seems a little strange to be mad about that. The game may not even exist at all if Nintendo didn't foot the bill.
Review bombing may always be a problem when it comes to user reviews, but some have taken steps to combat it. For example, Valve has started pushing back against review bombing, and Metacritic has removed review bombing accounts in the past. Whether or not more drastic efforts are taken in the future remains to be seen.
Astral Chain is out now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.
Source: Metacritic